


Grown

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: All Is Well: Pictures of the Wizarding World After the War [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Self-Acceptance, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 13:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14106855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: There are times that, despite everything that has happened in the twenty years since those days, he still feels like the boy with the lopsided robes and lit Remembrall, chasing after his toad and messing up his Potions.





	Grown

There are times that, despite everything that has happened in the twenty years since those days, he still feels the eleven-year-old awkwardness in him overshadow all else, still feels like the boy with the lopsided robes and lit Remembrall chasing after his toad and messing up his Potions. In such times, nothing—not the Order of Merlin that hangs on the wall over his desk, not the epiphany lights that go off behind his students’ eyes, not the kind words from Sprout or McGonagall or Luna or Ginny or Harry, nor even Hannah’s embrace—can make him feel otherwise. _You’ve grown,_ they all try to tell him. _Look at everything you’ve accomplished since then, Neville. Look at who you are now. You’re not that child anymore._ But these assurances all feel hollow, ring untrue in his ears.

So he wordlessly trudges to the greenhouses and finds the strongest stalks growing tall. Pulls them out of the dirt as if to repot them, examines the tiny seeds at their roots. ( _You’ve got to be carful,_ he lectures his O.W.L students. _It’s always the most fragile seeds that grow into the strongest plants. They’re the most vulnerable, so you have got to look after them. But if you give them what they need to grow, you’ll see what those seeds really contain._ He adds: _It’s not that they become something else. It’s just that you can’t see what they are yet._ )

__

__

And then he pulls that eleven-year-old boy to him with soil-coated hands, lays a kiss on his forehead. _Thank you,_ he tells him. _Thank you for your strength, and for everything that you had within you, everything that you held on to even when it was hard, even when you couldn’t see it, that together we brought to bloom._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


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